Never too old for new things
This side of 60
Originally published 09:30 a.m., October 5, 2007
Updated 09:30 a.m., October 5, 2007
My husband and I love all the arts, but we especially enjoy the visual arts and live theater. As a result, last weekend was a very exciting time for us.
The weekend began Thursday night when 30 people from our Sunday School class went to dinner theater. The show was the musical “Guys and Dolls.” What a fun evening!
Then Friday night, we attended a gallery show which featured some of our son’s large ceramic pieces. But the crowning glory was Saturday afternoon and evening.
We traveled three and a half hours to the small town of Pittsburg, where there was a gathering of world-class artists, art collectors, a photographer from Japan, state and city elected officials, people who live in Pittsburg, art students from around the country and corporate executives from California.
Jun Kaneko is a Japanese-born ceramic artist whose work is displayed in the most prestigious galleries around the world. And he is often invited to work in studios in other countries and across the United States.
At the invitation of the owners of Mission Clay, Kaneko built pieces at the company’s site in Fremont, Calif., from 1992 to 1994.
One of the owners, who is himself an artist and once taught art at San Francisco State University, now is a full-time executive of Mission Clay Products and values the arts very much.
Mission Clay has factories in Arizona, Texas and Kansas, as well as in California.
This time Kaneko was invited to build pieces in the working clay pipe factory in Pittsburg, which has 20 kilns 30 feet wide by 16 feet high. Kaneko built 30 pieces in two kilns.
Last Saturday was the opening and we were invited because our son was project manager for both the California and the Kansas projects. What a party!
First, skilled workmen at the factory demonstrated the process of making sewer pipes. Next we walked through a forest of Kaneko’s 9-foot Dangos (Japanese dumplings) with spectacular glazes.
The 13-foot Dangos were still in the kiln in which they were fired, as were the giant Easter Island-like heads.
Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times described Kaneko’s heads as “the size of baby rhinos,” and the Dangos as “a little like a ship’s billowing sail, each one weighing thousands of pounds.”
The Pittsburg factory has been making bricks and sewer pipes for 125 years, but this is the first time in its history that the factory had a world-class art opening.
Before we sat down at elegant tables set with fine china and beautiful floral arrangements, a professional chamber music ensemble performed. It was a spectacular moment.
Displayed near the trio was a 10-foot sewer pipe and a 9-foot Dango. The sewer pipe was formed in 4 1/2 minutes and the Dango took 2 1/2 years to complete.
Both displayed great artistry and both were fired in the historic beehive kilns at Mission Clay. The pipe continues a tradition that began in Pittsburg 125 years ago. The Dango brought something new and exciting to the city, thanks to a group of creative minds who saw new potential in the old kilns.
It reminded me that you’re never too old to do something new, even if you are a kiln!
• Write Marie Snider at thisside60@aol.com or visit her website at www.visit-snider.com